20. “The Town Vanished Before Our Eyes”
When Mount Pelee erupted, all of Saint Pierre’s buildings were flattened, and the population was burned or suffocated to death. Offshore, a witness in a steamship described the city’s fate when the incandescent cloud hit: “The fire rolled down upon Saint Pierre. The town vanished before our eyes“. The eruption killed about 28,000 people in Saint Pierre – nearly the town’s entire population, except for one man: Auguste Cyparis.
A laborer and frequent troublemaker, Cyparis had gotten into a bar brawl on the night of May 7th, some hours before the eruption. He was thrown into jail overnight for assault, and locked in solitary confinement. That was in a partially underground magazine with stone walls, which doubled as a cell. It had no windows, and its only ventilation was through tiny gratings on a door facing away from the volcano. In short, Cyparis’ solitary confinement cell was the most sheltered place in Saint Pierre. That saved his life.